Bertice Is Back, Lena & Legrand, Sylvia Lovingly, Jane Just For You, Plus A Contrapuntal-Ish Secret Song!

Doesn't Bertice look luffly? And she's back today - just for you and yours - in this So Bertice Cheerful Exclusive! It's her 1976 LP (restored in 1991) "The Two Moods of Bertice Reading." Aren't you glad you stopped by? Get this. In the late 1960's, jazz fans were so bowled over by her performance at Amsterdam's Apollohal that after the finale, they stormed the stage - and it collapsed. Luckily, no one was seriously injured, but the scene made the front pages of newspapers all over Europe.

Bertice could sing almost anything - jazz, pop, blues, gospel - and in "Two Moods," she swings from New Orleans jazz to pop to mellow blues and ballads. Her version of "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" is a delight, and on "I Cried For You," her smoothness just barely conceals the heartbreak.

Oh, and here's a nice little bonus. Bertice speaks! In this wonderful 1984 BBC interview, she chit-chats about her birth - it caused a literal splash - her life, her high-flying and sometimes camel-riding career and the eight LPs she'd take to a desert island:

If I had to take LPs to a desert island (I refuse to limit it to just eight), I'm sure I'd take one by Lena Horne, along with this picture:

Lena collaborated with just about everyone under the sun, of course, but her work with Michel Legrand on 1975's "Lena & Michael" is maybe her most head-turning. Why? Because she didn't just sing his catalog of songs as everyone else had - in a straight-ahead fashion, following the melody line - but instead, in her own Lena style. Trust me, you have never heard "I Will Wait For You" like this. It doesn't just swoon, it swoons, simmers, then explodes. That's our Lena.

And now, gaze upon the quintessential New York cabaret singer, the tres elegante Sylvia Syms:

When I think of Sylvia, I think of Bobby Short, Peggy Lee and all the singers who worked the cabaret circuit pre-Giuliani - back when I paid 900.00 for a huge one-bedroom with separate dining room in the West Village (it now goes for 3700.00). I was there for fourteen years, long enough to enjoy the neighborhood's last creative heyday, and then its arguable decline into a Haves-Only playground for the top one-percent (or people like this)

But I digress. "Lovingly," Sylvia's 1976 LP (yet another Cheerful Exclusive!) is silky, low-key jazz - and the kind only this Brooklyn-born singer could do. She was a regular at Cafe Carlyle, and no less than Frank Sinatra called her "the world's greatest saloon singer." As you listen to the songs on this LP, you can almost hear the faint clink of cocktail glasses, detect a whiff of lingering cigarette smoke and from the corner of your eye, catch a red-coated Carlyle waiter whisking past. It was a wonderful time to be in Manhattan. And it's gone forever.

Gone, but never forgotten, is Jane Wyman, who became famous anew after Ronnie Rayguns became President. She'd long divorced him, which prompted much commentary after he took office.

In the early 1950's, Jane starred opposite Bing Crosby in "Just For You," a lark-ish movie which had Jane smitten with Bing and contending with his two children, including that industrial-made charmer Natalie Wood (or the movie's answer to the Princess Phone). The soundtrack has several buoyant songs performed by Bing, Jane, and the Andrew Sisters, too. How can you go wrong?

Back in the day, The Secret Song File had to audition for everything - and hated it! Oh, the patience she endured when casting director after casting director failed to see her charms. When they told her to leave after a gorgeous reading, she just couldn't believe it.

That's all a memory now, thank God, but when those irksome memories resurface, they're easily swept away by listening to this upbeat, daisy-tripping, multifaceted pop group. Their newest release does not disappoint. And, yes, their name is partly a nod to a musical term which describes two or more simultaneous lines of melody performed at once - and getting along like gangbusters. Oh, happy day!

Are you happy yet? I am!

Trip on daisies or whatever in the comments, if you like!

Bertice Sells It Softly, Vikki's First Time, Dusky's Finest, Plus The King Goes Creole And A Blurry Secret Song!

Behold Bertice! There's only one. If you've seen the movie version of "Little Shop Of Horrors," then you know her as the singing homeless woman in the number "Downtown." But it was my Cuban Luvuh who knew that she had done much more than "Little Shop," which was actually her last professional appearance.

Like many black performers, she started singing at her church in the 1940's in her native Pennsylvania. That led to talent shows, a gig with The Count Basie Orchestra, a contract with RCA records, a Tony-nominated debut performance on Broadway, and then, for much of her professional life, stage and cabaret performances in London. She died from a sudden stroke at age 57 in 1991.

Her self-titled 1983 LP - a Cheerful Exclusive! - is a lovely collection of ballads. She gets under the skin of "I Wish You Love" and "Lover Man," for instance, with a lot more subtlety than most performers. And so you can understand why they loved her in the UK. She never oversells a lyric, but instead leads you unobtrusively from one soul-stirring moment to the next. Yet it would be simplistic to say that she just "acts" the songs; when she sings "The Right To Be Wrong," for example, it's too harrowing an experience to be labeled as mere performance.

Let's move on now, from soft...to thunderous! Yes, it's the Little Latina Powerhouse known as Miss Vikki Carr. Hold tight.

Her 1964 LP "Discovery" - a Loud Latina Cheerful Exclusive! - was her first, and it must have seemed like a whopping shot of adrenaline to its listeners at the time. But then she'd already been wowing them on the club and cabaret circuit in Chicago when this LP was recorded (some of the more understated reviewers noted, "I can't think of a more exciting night in cabaret within the last twenty years!" and "What a big voice for one so petite!").

She's definitely a knock-you-flat-type performer, though she builds carefully to her peaks (unlike, say, Shirley Bassey, who starts at the highest peak possible) (then shoots higher), and some of the tracks here are classics of early-60's power-vocal delivery, especially "Bluesette" and "Never Will I Marry." Unsurprisingly, her next LP was called "Color Her Great!" Immodest, yes. Accurate? Claro esta!

From soft to thunderous to chill, baby, chill. Pay no mind that the musicians below are giving you a Nerds-Wrapped-In-Glowsticks vibe. Dusky are much more than that.

In their debut 2011 CD, they easily wow with their trance-out electronica, but they're also noteworthy given their ability to draw from such a wide variety of musical genres - orchestral, classical piano, soul. And they do it seamlessly. If you've grown weary of same-sounding electronica efforts, trust me, this just might surprise you.

Were you alive in 1957? I wasn't (no, really), but that was the year Elvis spent Christmas at his newly purchased Graceland estate - and then received his draft notice. Elvis the Pelvis was off to war!

I do like Elvis, but only in small doses (heresy, I know). However, I can happily listen to the King Creole soundtrack any time, any where. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because the cheese factor is bit higher, or that it really does seem to exemplify the giggly innocence of another era entirely with songs such as "Lover Doll" and the title track, with priceless lyrics like, "He sings a song about a crawdad hole! He sings a song about a jelly roll!" How can you resist?

People copy the Secret Song File's look all the time. The hair, the lips, the eyebrows. Sitting in her office, she often thinks about confronting her lookalikes, but what's the point? Should a certain R&B singer cry foul? After all, he did his white-boy-soul thing first, then Justin Timberlake copied him; then he created a music video with naked models, and Justin Timberlake copied him again.

But let's be honest, they're both stealing from the Gloved One, and he stole right and left from James Brown and Bob Fosse (everyone steals from Fosse) It's like a hall of mirrors, isn't it? All the lines are getting blurred (*cough*), especially on this nicely smooth EP by an artist whose first name is the same as a familiar superhero's sidekick, and whose last is the same as Audrey's eyebrows.

And yet, no one beats these eyebrows; gone, but never forgotten.

Use an eyebrow pencil in the comments, if you like!